- We've roughed out
and isolated our best thumbnail drawings.
Now we're going to reapproach each of those rough drawings
and we're going to redraw them more precisely.
Our end result is going to give us a road map
to build from in vector form.
This is best shown than explained,
so let me show you how to use refined drawing
and think about drawing as you approach this stage.
We're now going to approach refined drawing,
and if you use reference in thumbnail drawing, that's fine,
but it's not necessary.
You can just make sure you capture the essence,
but when it comes to refinement,
you need to pay attention to the details
that you tended to ignore in the thumbnail stage.
So in this case, we want to reapproach the concept
that we came up with, and here's the thumbnail sketch.
We can go ahead and move our reference off,
just so we can see it as we're working.
So here's our thumbnail sketch and I have the bear,
I have it all drawn out the way I intend it to be
in a crude thumbnail sketch
so I don't forget what I want to do,
but now we need to refine it.
So I need to clarify the shape, clarify the form,
I don't want to use my pencil either,
I want to use my mechanical pencil to draw it more precisely,
it'll give me clean lines,
and then that way, when I scan it in,
we can build from our refined sketch.
So I'll be drawing on top of this
on another piece of vellum,
and this is why you'd want to use a light box
or in my case, I'm using a light pad,
and always be ready to look over at the reference
and study the shapes within the real aspects of an animal.
If you look at the head, their heads are really boxy.
They have necks, but the head just goes right into the neck,
much like my own head. (laughs)
So we're going to draw the bear now, and we're going to simplify,
keep the aesthetic simplified but iconic.
So this is where I would go in,
and using a mechanical pencil like this,
I would start really dialing in the exact aesthetic here.
So you can see this line just sweeps up
right into the mountain range
and I'd want to keep all of these angles kind of consistent.
Now, it might not be perfect,
so when you scan it in and you start to build,
you realize you didn't have the angles spot on,
but that's easy to correct when you get into a vector format
and adjust those details.
The head, once again, tends to be very boxy.
You can rotate the paper,
if you prefer working digitally,
and you're doing this on your iPad Pro for example,
you could rotate the screen, the same's true.
My daughter does all of her drawing,
whether it's sketches or in this case,
a more precise, refined sketch,
she does all of it on her iPad Pro.
And so the nice thing about drawing
is whether you work digitally, on an iPad Pro, drawing,
or analog, like I do,
I've been drawing this way
for the past 30 years professionally.
So I kind of prefer it over digital,
and some people ask me,
"Why don't you just draw this on the iPad?"
Well, it's because when I'm drawing an analog like this,
I can see everything all in one sight.
If I'm drawing a certain area on an iPad,
you'll be framed to that area,
and you don't see elements outside that area.
And I like seeing everything at once
because I can make sure
my continuity of, let's say it's a line thickness,
is holding up.
I also pay attention to things like contour continuation,
so on this leg, I'm going to have this go up
and it's going to kind of create
the backside of the head there.
I don't really like how I drew this.
And this is where you'll want to draw and redraw,
erase and redraw again.
Don't think like you're making mistakes
because that's the way it's done
in order to work out those details.
So you can see how the front of the leg
informs onto the back of the head.
I really like when that relationship with shapes happens,
I think it makes for a better overall design.
We'll add his eye in there.
We'll go ahead and work out the back of that leg.
Keep in mind as I'm showing you this,
is I normally draw something like this
a little bigger and take a lot more time,
'cause I'm pretty picky.
I'll look at it, I'll walk away and I'll come back to it
in an hour or so,
and I can usually tell what's not working that great,
or what could I improve upon here
now that I'm looking at it.
The bear's rump, that's a word you don't say much.
Okay, we're going to add the shading in here.
This is the area in the back here.
One area I'm not completely sure how to break that up,
but we'll go with this at this point,
we might change that as we move to vector.
I'm just adding in those areas that are going to read
as kind of like the shading on the mountain range
to give it a little volume, a little shape.
These little star shapes,
we don't need to draw those perfectly
'cause we can create those really easy
using Shape Tools in Illustrator.
Once again, anything that's a geometric shape,
this body is more freeform,
but anything like a geometric shape,
such as this sun that we have here,
I don't get hung up on drawing a perfect circle
because you have the Ellipse Tool in Illustrator
and you can draw a perfect circle in Illustrator.
So don't get hung up on those.
Just put it in, knowing that you can perfect it
when you go to build it.
So those kinds of elements, since there's lakes here,
we'll put some wavy lines to represent the lakes here.
As I stated earlier, I'm usually drawing a lot slower.
So,
you have a finite amount of time in a movie,
but it's those kinds of elements.
Now, one aspect to this that I am going to add
is I'm going to add in some linear lines.
So I'll draw those in, even though they're not perfect,
because I don't want to forget to do that.
I've done that at times, where I forgot
to add some kind of detail,
and then when I go to build it, I forget to do it.
So this is just to remind me
that those will be equally spaced lines.
We'll also use that same detailing up here
in the mountain like this.
So if you look from a thumbnail sketch, you know,
you wouldn't want to build from that
because you can't see the exact form and edge,
where does the curve go?
But if you take the time to really work out
a refined drawing, it's going to become a roadmap
to help you build your vector art.
So I just wanted to show you that.
Now, when I have my daughter work with me,
once again, she's a great drawer,
so I provided her with that same reference I showed you,
the same thumbnail sketch.
And I said, "Can you draw a more refined version of this?"
And these were the two drawings she gave back to me,
which are awesome.
I love this one.
I said, "Do one with interior content
and do one that's more simplified,"
because I was thinking we might come back
and add type that reverses out of the body here.
And so she gives me this and I take it.
And this is where I become art director and I simplify it.
When it comes to design, it's more about what to decide
not to include in something,
rather than it is adding more content to it.
So if we take a look at the bottom here,
this is pretty complicated.
And so I just simplified it,
removed content, simplified the lines,
but this now gives me a nice refined sketch
I can scan in and build from.
I did the same thing on the top.
This is how we tend to work together.
We work in tandem like this,
and when it comes to redrawing on top of hers,
it's just simplifying shapes again.
This was okay for this foot right here,
but it's a little rounded.
She kind of drew the bear feet like bear feet really are,
and you can see I changed those just to be beefy and bold
for the final artwork.
So that's how the process will work
going from a crude thumbnail sketch,
refining it a little bit, and perfecting it even more,
so now we can move to vector and build it.
We're going to switch over to another aspect of Cascade Lakes.
And you saw the original thumbnails,
where it was more of a scene.
Here's one of the thumbnails that I worked out
and I wasn't sure how to handle this.
So once again, I just redrew it directly on top.
So if you look side by side,
it's the same narrative from the left to the right,
but this is precise.
If I scan this in and build it,
I know the exact shapes I'm going to build.
I know that I'm going to have lines
that make up the detailing on the sky
and the reflection in the lake.
And this is going to remove all the guesswork.
At this point,
I'm thinking of a kind of a rectangular shape,
and that's ultimately going to change,
as you're going to see moving forward.
But it's all about working and thinking in shapes
to help improve the drawing process
to create a nice guide for building.
Here's the one based off of that initial sketch
that kind of sent me down this path.
And once again, I've worked everything out
in terms of simple shapes,
so I know exactly what I'm creating here.
It's going to be a circular motif.
Some of the other concepts I came up with,
such as these,
the simple shapes that work with the background shape.
We're going to have type running on the outside here,
but when it comes to like this design,
I wasn't sure if I wanted to use this tree.
So I decided to draw another tree style
that kind of worked with this
'cause it read like thick lines.
This looked more like too big of a shape,
it wasn't fitting with everything else in the design.
Here's an idea I thought I'd use.
I ultimately didn't use it,
but I had drawn it out just in case I wanted to.
We're going to switch over to elevating culture now,
we're going to reuse the same reference
we used in the thumbnail stage with the leopard.
Here's the first one I drew out.
I didn't mind this so much after I refined the body shape,
but I really didn't like the head.
It just didn't look very sophisticated.
If I had to put a voice to it, it'd be like, "Uh."
So I thought I could improve on that.
So I drew it again one time
and I'm like, "No, I don't really like that,"
drew it again, this is getting a little too intimidating.
Once again, it's a sophisticated lifestyle brand,
so these were looking to kind of video game graphic logo.
And so I did one that's more subdued but strong.
And I think this is going to work great.
So even though I worked out the head, worked out the body,
they're not fused together, but when I scan this in,
I'll just replace this head with this and Photoshop.
So that's tends to be the way I work
when it comes to this kind of project
and this type of content, where I need to experiment
a little as I'm creating it and drawing it out.
Here's that original pose.
This is by far I think so far my favorite one,
I think it's bold, it's strong, it's going to work great.
In the final context, I wanted to add wings.
So here's where I'll go back to that kind of loose sketching
on top of my refined sketch,
just to get that nice flare and movement,
and then I'll just use this rough sketch
to redraw more precisely, like I did the body itself.
And these two, again, I'm going to fuse together in Photoshop.
This is going to look so cool so I can't wait to build it.
It's at this stage,
I kind of get excited to move to vector to start building
so I can see how it's going to come out.
Here's another one using that same pose
that we Photoshopped together,
that I showed you in the previous movie.
And I couldn't make up my mind how to handle the head,
so I just did two options there.
Here's one, my daughter's sketch.
She worked from a really good reference
that showed a leopard kind of looking back.
And I like that whole concept, like moving into the future,
but taking recognition of the past type thing.
And I originally drew this one, as you can see here,
but on the head, I didn't like how the bottom,
in this case, I let the photo kind of manipulate
how I deduce shape and form,
and this just looks like he has chunky cheeks,
which is not how a leopard is.
So I went back to my leopard reference,
really studied their chin, and it's just a sweeping curve,
I had originally did this one as a second try,
I didn't like it, did this one,
I go, "Okay, that's it, that's the one we're going to use."
Again, we'll Photoshop it together.
And one of the last body poses here is this one.
And again, I'll just point out,
if you struggle with drawing, don't worry about it.
You can get reference to help you like this one,
but sometimes you want to bake your own reference.
And this is another case of doing that.
You can see here,
this back part is based off of a leopard photo I saw,
but that photograph wasn't a great pose.
So I just did all kinds of distortion with Warp
to get that form of a tail to look that way,
the same with the leg.
And you can see how it's distorted,
but I fused that onto a black leopard
who I liked his body and core, but not so much his leg.
And so I reformatted, reshaped the leg, that is,
kind of Photoshop plastic surgery
for reference, if you will.
And then I drew with white on top of it
to define where those edges are going to cut in
and separate from the front leg.
Didn't like the head, dropped in another head altogether.
So again, we're using Frankenstein methodology,
but if this helps you to draw out a design like this,
all it comes down to now
is just simplifying form and shape
to align with a nice elegant aesthetic.
So that's how I approached that and created it.
And if you struggle with drawing and it intimidates you,
this would be a great place to start,
because the better you can get at this
is the better you're going to get overall
when it comes to drawing.
There is no secret, the more you draw, the better you get.
It's a progressive skill.
On this one, again, I wanted to add wings.
I tried it this way, straight,
you know, nice horizontal orientation to it,
but it was looking a little static.
I think it needed a little movement.
So I went ahead and arched it.
I think this feels a lot better,
it brings some nice elegance and movement to it.
And of course we redrew it again more precisely.
And I'll take both of these drawings,
whether it's the body, whether it's the wing,
and we'll fuse them together in Photoshop
to give us what we need to build on,
a guide to build with inside Illustrator.
My daughter, once again,
drew her original sketch pretty tight,
but there's certain details I didn't like,
so I just went in and refined it and polished it.
Now this is ready to roll. This is going to be a great mark.
I can't wait to go ahead and build that
and see where it leads to.
Here's the last body pose,
once again, this was the original thumbnail sketch I did,
pretty loose, but it informed me enough
to now draw it out precisely,
all the line weights are the same,
and this was going to be a great mark as well
as we move forward after refining it.
Here's the face.
The more I was looking at this face,
I thought the top of the head was too round.
A panther's head tends to kind of be shallower of a curve
and then it kind of goes inward
and creates a small, little valley in the middle
of his head, so I changed that.
We'll go ahead and Photoshop that in.
I also, as I was looking at his cheeks,
I thought maybe a little round,
or maybe just make it completely round, I'm not sure yet.
I still don't know,
but it's easy enough to experiment with in Photoshop
and I'll pick whichever direction I think works best.
Refine the wings so it matches the aesthetic
of the overall head.
This is going to be a great mark as well.
So refinement isn't so much about exploring.
You've already isolated directions to take.
It's taking each of those isolated directions, those ideas,
and refining them, refining the visual clarity,
so as you move forward from here,
there's not a lot of guesswork.
You can take your refined sketch,
scan it in using a flatbed scanner,
place it into Illustrator,
and it will serve as a roadmap for your vector building.
That's not to say,
you might want to change things as you start to build it
because it looks better.
That's how you art direct yourself, that's great,
but this is going to remove a lot of the guesswork
and make the creative process a whole lot easier.
I realize this stage of the creative process
may be intimidating, and that's normal.
Any time you approach a new genre or topic or style,
it's going to intimidate you, you might struggle with it.
And I encourage you to embrace the fear and stick with it.
In the midst of drawing,
you might not like what you draw,
that's okay, that's normal too,
just erase it and try it again.
The key to improving your skills is not giving up.